


If I breathe (it is in spite of you)

by thornier_thanu



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Actually no communication, Bad Communication, Ben Solo Needs A Hug, F/M, Miscommunication, No HEA, Not Beta Read, We Hate Snoke Here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-13
Updated: 2020-09-13
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:15:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26452453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thornier_thanu/pseuds/thornier_thanu
Summary: “I’m confused as to why you’re here.”“What do you mean?” Ben is genuinely confused. Why would he not be here?Or, Ben and Rey are bad at communicating, Ben just needs someone to talk to, and Poe hates mornings.
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 4
Kudos: 21





	If I breathe (it is in spite of you)

**Author's Note:**

> TW: very lightly hinted at underage Ben/Snoke, literally so lightly hinted at it might not even be there (starts ‘he remembered in third grade’, ends ‘too young then’)
> 
> Please forgive me if there are any typos, I wrote and posted this on a phone.

“Could you just... I dunno. Let her know I’m here?”

“Why should I?”

Ben doesn’t really have a good response to that, so he just stares at Poe until the shorter man shakes his head slowly.

“Let’s go get some coffee.”

“Coffee?”

“Yeah. It’s too early and I want coffee.”

“...too... early?” Ben glances at the clock. It’s just after noon.

“Unless you want to have this conversation in the doorway?”

Ben shakes his head and follows Poe down the stairs of the apartment building, toward Castle Coffee.

He would always stop there when he left Rey’s early in the morning. Maz would always have his coffee ready for him, handing it to him with a wink. “Saw your car parked out there all night, Bennie. Thought you might need a little extra something to get you through the day.” At first it made him blush, and she would guffaw loudly, her entire tiny body shaking with the force of it.

Now he was sitting there with Poe. He wished it was Rey.

“Listen. I don’t know all of it-“

“I’m surprised you know any of it.” Ben cut in, then flinched at Poe’s reproving eyebrow. “Sorry.”

“I don’t know all of it, but I know enough that I’m confused as to why you’re here.”

“What do you mean?” Ben is genuinely confused. Why would he not be there?

“It’s just... you never really seemed to interact with Rey when we were all together, you know?”

“I—“ Ben doesn’t know what to say. Poe was right, when Ben was with Rey’s friends (his friends too, mostly his friends first but somehow they were Rey’s friends more) he stayed quiet, stayed in the background while Rey... well, Rey glowed bright.

That’s probably why Ben was sitting in a too-small booth, trying to explain himself to one of his oldest acquaintances rather than being comforted by him.

“And I love Rey, don’t get me wrong but... this seems like a lot of effort to keep a good lay around.”

Ben is so taken aback that he just stares.

“Especially when, look at you, dude, you could walk into a bar and get—“

“Did you—“ Ben starts, not realizing that he cut Poe off. “‘A good lay’?”

“Well yeah.” Poe blinks, then, “isn’t it?”

“Why... what... what did she say to make it...” Ben’s brain is trying desperately to find the connection between his understanding of “ReyandBen” and Poe’s words.

“Ben...” Poe says slowly, as if he were talking to a very young child. “For as long as I have known her, Rey has only ever wanted to belong to something.”

“Yeah, and now she has Finn, and her workplace, I know she loves it there and fits so—“

“That’s not the same, you know it isn’t.” Poe cuts him off with an eye roll. “Listen, we both know she wanted so much more and you never gave it to her.”

Poe’s words seem to be reaching Ben from a very long way away. He is suddenly grateful for his coffee, because although he has not sipped it yet, the heat gives him something to focus on, to ground himself to this moment.

“She wanted you to be a boyfriend, to take her places and to bring her gifts at her work just because, and you—“

“I wanted that too.” Ben rasped out, his voice too raspy and too sudden, too loud for the venue.

“What?”

“Poe, you don’t... she never.” And all of a sudden Ben feels wild, he wants to pace around, he wants to move, he wants to go to Rey and— “Fuck, Poe, I didn’t KNOW.”

“How could you not know?!” Poe is disbelieving, and Ben hates it even as he understands.

“Poe, you have to believe me. I asked her so many times and in so many ways but she always—“ the memories surge up and he almost vomits.

——

_He turned into her, nuzzling his nose into her shoulder. “Interested in dinner?” He hopes his voice is casual, that she’ll mistake his pounding heart for remnants from the earth-shattering orgasm she had coaxed from him._

_“Mm, some other time.” She had said, standing up, and Ben’s heart had sank. Rey never said no to food._

_—_

_“You want to watch a movie?” Ben had asked another time._

_“Ooo, Solo, Netflix and chill? What would_ _your parents say?”_

_Ben had laughed- they both knew his parents would say something like “go get ‘em, tiger”- but tried to clarify. “Nah, I was thinking... there’s that new superhero movie out, I thought-“ he trailed off as he noticed that Rey has stiffened. “Never mind, it was a dumb idea.”_

_“Better we just stay in, wouldn’t you say?” Rey had laughed and trailed her fingers down his chest suggestively. Rey had not stayed over that night. She never did._

_—_

_“Flowers?! Ben, did your mother stop by and not tell me?” Rey’s bright voice came in from his living room, and Ben jumped. She was early, his hair wasn’t brushed enough, he wasn’t even wearing a shirt._

_“They’re desert verbenas!” He called back. “They’re apparently really hardy, you can’t kill them.” He smiled at her as he enters his front room. Her fingers were buried in the flowers. They don’t have much of a scent, he knows, but they’re pretty, all purple pinpricks in a growth of green. He had understood immediately why they were Rey’s favorite._

_“Mmm, you taking up gardening?” Rey trailed over to him, but there’s a hitch in her voice that tells him she knew he wasn’t._

_“Nah, just saw them and thought you might want to add them to your garden graveyard.” Rey had tried and failed more times than he could count to keep a flower box alive. So far her longest plant had survived a week before she heard that coffee was good for plants and had dumped a small cup of boiling instant coffee into the box._

_“Excuse you! It’s not a graveyard!”_

_“I’m sorry, I know you clean it out between deaths.” He laughed at her, and she smacked him playfully, and he caught her hand (so tiny in his own awkward paw) and pulled her into his bedroom, and she had left both him and the flowers behind._

——

“I guess I eventually got the hint, you know?”

Poe is looking floored at the outpouring of expression from Ben, who is so usually closed off. It had been easy to think that of the two, Ben was less attached than Rey. “I figured, if that’s not what she wants, I just wanted to...” Ben runs a hand through his hair, feeling helpless. “I thought I could be happy just being a, a I don’t know, a fuck buddy because it meant I was with her somehow.”

And all of a sudden, Poe understands. “You love her, don’t you?”

Ben nods, looking devastated. “And I... I don’t know, Poe. This morning, just after... Han called and heard her in the background, and it was the first time she had stayed over and I panicked because I thought that maybe I was getting somewhere with her, was going to get something more with her, an I panicked and Han asked who it was and I said nothing.” He pauses, flexes his hand, and corrects himself. “No, I said nobody.”

“And she ran, didn’t she?” Poe wants to groan because honestly he loves the both of them but they’re so stupid, so fucking stubborn sometimes.

“I barely had time to hang up.” Ben confirms, and they fall silent as the waitress comes up to deposit their check. They didn’t ask for it, but given they’ve been here for at least 30 minutes and only Poe has touched his coffee, Ben isn’t surprised.

“Still want to talk to her?” Poe asks as they walk back toward the apartment building. Ben pauses outside it and considers.

“I don’t know.” He sighs finally. “I know I need to but I—“

Poe understands. He wants to talk to Rey, too, but... after all, Ben is his oldest friend. Maybe not his closest, but he still remembers when Ben has taken off his own pants to give to Poe when Poe had an accident during a first grade field trip to the zoo.

The teacher had not been impressed, but it had earned Ben an ice cream from Han when he found out why his son had been returned sans pants.

“Would you just tell her I stopped by?” Ben sounds broken, and Poe’s heart tenses in sympathy.

“Yeah, man. I will.” He forces Ben into a brief hug, slapping the other man roughly on the back. “Don’t be a stranger, ok? Whatever happens with you and Rey, you were my friend first.”

Ben nods, his fists clenched tightly, and thinks he might lose his battle with tears if he stays any longer. He doesn’t trust himself to speak and he whirls away toward his car. Not knowing where else to go, he returns home and sits in silence, hoping his phone will ring. Like everything else, he will let Rey determines how fast this goes, where it goes, if it goes at all. Maybe that was where he went wrong. He hadn’t been upfront enough, he had never told her how he felt, what he wanted. He knew he wasn’t the most expressive, all his feelings came out as rage and there was nothing between that and his regular blankness that could fool anyone into thinking he just. didn’t. care.

** That had been the point, after all. He remembered in third grade, crying when he had been excluded again from a game on the playground, and Mr Snoke, their principle, had come over to him. At first he was excited that such an important adult was coming to speak with him, but then the words “stop crying like a baby” came and they didn’t stop. “It makes you seem weak, and if you are weak you are worthless. You don’t want to be worthless, do you?” Ben had not wanted that, so he sniffed up his tears and tried to meet Mr Snoke in his eyes. “Emotions are the vehicle to our subjugation, Ben. If you want to own your person, you must first control your person.”

Ben had not understood, but he liked the way it sounded, had liked how Snoke looked at him rather than any of the other children.

“How do I-?” Ben started, unsure what he even wanted to ask.

“I can teach you, if you wanted.” And Snoke’s eyes glowed at Ben’s nod, glowed in a way that should have made him know immediately what the old man had wanted but he was too young then. **

And now he was old. And still, despite everything, had kept that first lesson with him. And it had cost him Rey, was currently costing him Rey.

His phone rang and he nearly leapt across the table to pick up.

“Rey?!” His voice is breathless, and there’s a pause on the other end.

“Ben?” A voice says hesitantly, and his heart plummets. “Did you want to come over for dinner tonight?”

He knew that wasn’t what his mother had called to ask, but he can’t turn the offer down. “I... could I actually maybe come over for a few days?”

There’s a longer silence on the phone, and Ben can practically feel the concern pouring of his mother, but when she says “yes of course” it’s like an answered prayer.

**Author's Note:**

> This entire thing was supposed to be a rant to a friend that.. got away from me? I’ve been reading a lot of really good fics lately where Ben & Rey have a blow up because let’s face it, they have communication issues that would keep a therapist up at nights, and then Ben goes to Rey and apologizes, grovels really, and she forgives him. Which is totally ok and he should apologize, but SO SHOULD SHE. He never asked, she never said. And a lot of these fics don’t have her ever apologizing or even admitting that she did something wrong. It’s a personal pet peeve of mine but hey nobody ever said I was good at relationships.


End file.
